The Swamp
by FortuneGuideDoom
Summary: Set several hundred years in the future of current M:tG lore. A short story about two planeswalkers searching for an artifact on an ancient plane.


I shudder to remember that fateful day. It began as innocently as any other. We had been dispatched to an ancient plane to recover an item of great significance to our guild leader. What the item was I knew not, nor did I know why he chose not to trust me with this information. It was likely a powerful artifact or some grim necromantic spell.

Either way it was my partner who had been trusted with this information, and it was her lead that I followed as we walked through the roiling aether that day. Even before our arrival we were greeted by a repugnant miasma as the realm opened up to us; the smell of death. A scent I had encountered before, but one that I will never be prepared for.

The world's visage proved to be a dark bleak one. We stepped into a vast oily swamp. The remnants of a once great jungle; now the open grave of a thousand beings both human and inhuman. The dim light from overhead barely filtered through in small shafts ofttimes illuminating some grotesque shape lying in the surrounding bog infested earth. Of all the characteristics of this plane perhaps the most noticeable was the penetrating silence. It was as though no being living or otherwise had been here for a hundred years.

My partner stopped and began to whisper; daemonic runes glowing faintly on her skin. Her spell having been cast she began to trudge through the virulent muck in a direction that seemed clear to her. I followed wordlessly. We continued walking for what seemed like hours occasionally breaking the monotony of our footfalls in the sludge by passing great ruins of keeps and castles. Every now and then one of the ruinous buildings would have just enough residual mana to grant me a glimpse into the past of this once wondrous plane. The rolling mountains and the sprawling plains, a city on an island, the house of a great family, but there was something more. Something the land was trying to show me, but I couldn't quite see it.

Eventually we stopped at one of the ruins; a decrepit looking temple of sorts. My partner stopped and softly said, "This is it." She began to walk around the ruin, uttering spells, apparently in an attempt to find an entrance. Suddenly, out of the quiet, a noise exploded forth from the temple; the sound of stone grinding against stone. Dust began to billow forth as did a renewed stench of death. The sound died away, once again leaving us in that piercing silence. As the dust settled a flight of stairs leading down into the ground was revealed. My partner proceeded forth without hesitation, and I strove to hide my revulsion at entering this crypt as I followed her.

What I saw I almost couldn't comprehend. It was an underground city; a necropolis with no inhabitants. The black mana was strong here, and the visions came more frequently as we traversed the underground labyrinth. I felt as though I was getting closer to some sort of triumphant finale, but somehow my dread was increasing with each vision. At this point I began to feel something else gnawing at my mind. A voice in a dreadful ancient language I could not understand whispering and yet screaming at the same time. And then I saw it, a massive invasion of grotesque inhuman creatures spewing forth from an artificial plane; led by a human. Words flashed in my mind. "The Ineffable", "The Lord of the Wastes"

An inhuman scream pulled me from the vision. It was with terror that I realized that my partner was no longer in sight. It was then that I noticed that the impenetrable silence was no longer. I don't recall much after this point, but I do remember the distinct revelation that my partner was dead or worse, and that I was no longer alone. In horror I reached out to the blind eternities to go home. The last thing I remember seeing as the expanse was closed to the plane behind me was a deformed mechanical being that looked horribly like my partner.

Upon my return to my home plane I was taken to the guild master. After hearing my account he did not seem astonished. Nor did he punish me for my failure, or the abandonment of my partner. He merely ordered my silence on the topic, and assigned me to a new partner. I can still hear the voice from the ancient plane in my head some days. I know not how much longer I can endure it. As such, I write this account in violation of my orders as a message to those who will hear it and a warning to those will not. Beware of the ancient plane known as Dominaria for herein lies Urborg, the tomb of Yawgmoth.


End file.
